Groucho Marx

Groucho was born Julius Henry Marx on Oct 2 1890 in New York. He was the third of the five
surviving sons of Sam and Minnie Marx. He was the first of the brothers to start a stage career
aged 15 in an act called
The
Leroy Trio.
Other acts followed, but none of them was a great
success. Twice the other members of the act disappeared overnight and left him penniless in
places far away from home.

When his Brothers came on stage they finally has a success with the musical comedy called
I'll
Say She Is. It was at one of the performances of this show that Groucho got his
painted moustache. He arrived late at the theater and used greasepaint to create a moustache.
He found this so much easier than a glued-on moustache that he insisted on using this technique
from then on.

The Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers were also the first movies (except for one unreleased)
made by the Brothers and
were filmed in New York. The remaining movies were made in Hollywood.

In the later year of the Brothers movie career Groucho started
working on radio. He hosted
several programmes and was a guest on many shows. His biggest success was the comedy quiz
show
You Bet Your Life
which started in 1947. The show later moved to television and was
on the air until 1961.

Groucho also appeared in a few movies without his brothers (see below).

Always being a liberal, Groucho sometimes made critical remarks about politics and had
friends which were regarded as communist the the US of the 1950s. This let to Groucho
being investigated
by the FBI.

When Marx Brothers became popular again in the late sixties/early seventies Groucho made
a comeback with a show in Carnegie Hall in 1972.

At the film festival in Cannes in 1972 he was made Commandeur des Arts et Lettres
and in 1974 he received a special Academy Award for the achievements of the Marx Brothers.

Groucho died on August 19th 1977 at Cedars Sinai Medical Center. His ashes are
at Eden
Memorial Park, San Fernando, California.